Greedy Goblin

Friday, April 21, 2017

Do not play Albion Online (and suggest me a World game)

I was hoping that the non-corrupted devs win the internal struggle and the gold speculation "feature" is removed from Albion Online. I waited a week after the threadnought started on the forum, but there was no response, leaving me with no other options than uninstalling the game and urging you not to play it. Permanent page is up!

I requested games many times before (this is how I've found Albion), this time I'm more specific and has less criteria:

The game must have a "World", so if one player does something (killing a mob, taking a resource, building a building), it must be visible and affecting other players

The game must not be totally dead (like a hundred players or something)

Played on a PC

Can be pre-release (I already know of Crowfall and Camelot Unchained)

Can be of any genre

Fire away! This time I'm not looking for the perfect game, I just jump on the first looking good and try it out. I will either find it great and stay, shallow and quit or rigged and make a page.

43 comments:

bg.
said...

It is very disappointing to see such an issue not being answered by the devs where it is clear that the only ones who will benefit from silver to gold speculations are the players and RMTers with the right connections once the game releases.

I will not spend any more money on Albion but will continue playing as long as I can play for free while having fun without spending more than I have already spent (I am less bent on trading than you are...). I am doing this in Eve too, I continue to play only as far as I can continue to plex my accounts.

If other players want to sink their RL money in rigged virtual economies, in games I can play for free from it, more power to them...

I will certainly continue to follow your quest for the perfect game in this genre, though.

Just going to suggest runescape again real quick, it's super grindy and sort of for kids but it's a pretty popular traditional world game with a somewhat regulated market (basically they use alchemy to set item price floors, throw in a couple of arbitrary money sinks and call it a day) that gets real dumb once you get into the super rare items.

I remember back in middle school it used to be 5 bucks a month for a membership but they upped it to 15 at some point so maybe they made it three times as good since then.

It's at least bizarre enough to take a look at, you'll find groups of people just walking back and forth from mines to a bank for hours trying to eek out a little bit of gold.

I still think you are holding a standart that is not just unrealistic - but rather impossible and self-defeating.

Basically, you are saying that playing a game cannot be fulfilling if you don't get #1 spot in it and if that #1 spot requires playing in a boring way than whatever nuance exists in game's mechanics below the #1 spot is irrelevant.

Taking this same notion to the absurd degree - playing the money game in real world requires one to engage in gem, energy, weapon, drug, sex, terrorism and people trade. Any other business is irrelevant and nobody should play (which is what most people do by saying that there are more important things that money out there).

A game cannot be fulfilling if its mechanics and World are all irrelevant and all that matters is your ability to guess something out-of-game or get insider info from it. Yes, I believe Starcraft match should be about who clicks faster and have better build order and not about who guesses Blizzard Stock prices.

Yes, if you play the real life money game, you should do just as you suggested. This is exactly why we have games at the first place: escapism from the real life money game.

He is saying that your game conditions dont make sense. You are doing the equivalent of saying only the "businesses" he listed IRL count, nothing else makes money.You are asking people to find you a game where you can be #1 without having to do anything you dont like, because only #1 is acceptable, but cannot be something you consider effort. If you don't like what is required to be #1, you won't bother with anything else the game has to offer.

You just need to find a game you haven't yet accused the devs of illegal actions in, and go in that until you find those devs doing something, or go back to the games where you say they are doing bad things, and find evidence (or get to #1)

@Anon: I was never #1 in WoW raiding and had no problem playing for years. I stopped when Blizzard introduced the 3-months resets removing any kind of persistence. But there is still no "Don't play WoW" page. WoW isn't a rigged game, just one I don't like.

I indeed hate the APM based gameplay of Starcraft, and I don't play Starcraft. There is no "Don't play starcraft" page, for the same reason.

I was never #1 in World of Tanks and I loved that game, until I've found that the matchmaking is rigged (which is now consensus view).

I was never #1 in League of Legends and never expected to be one. I'd be happy writing my "how to climb to the top 10%" guides if I didn't bump into the "buy a champion, get a free win" rigging.

The only game where I was anywhere near #1 is EVE (I was probably the richest in EVE without EULA violation).

@Gevlon#1 is just an extreme example of "the game is not worth playing if i can't be top X%" mentality.

Your ability to guess out-of-game stuff is not the only thing that matters in Albion economy.It is the only that matters if your goal is having top tier income, but if your goal is to, say, feel like a fantasy crafter, then why would you care about someone out there insider trading game tokens?

That wouldn't even break fantasy much, because real-lfie medieval crafters had to deal with people richer than them benefitting from insider info all the time.

---

So are you saying you are using game economices to escape real-world money game in favour of a pretend pixel money game?

@Maxim: yes, a game is not worth playing (or I am not worthy of playing it) if I can't play it competitively. I'm surprised that someone even questions that obvious statement.

Yes, if you don't care about performance, just "hang out and have fun", then it's not a problem. But you know what? World of Warcraft and World of Tanks are both more "fun" with their lively graphics and instant gratification. Hence they have millions of players, exactly from the "cba xd" kind. If you are a game dev and try to make a "hang out and have fun", you are up for a bankruptcy, because you won't beat WoW/Wot.

I'm using game economies as an ideal money game as escapism from the nasty, insider trading, nepotism filled, politically corrupted real world money game. Just like boxing (a sport) is an escapism compared to brutal street fighting in riots where the opponents can attack 5v1 using steel pipes.

(as a response to your response to maxim)Ah i get it now, in EvE you simply played out the Station Trade thing to its conclusion.But where you attempted to be a power, without really trying to be an organizational Leader, you failed.

In EvE, it does not matter if you can play the station trade game to your Level, or find a scheme that may or may not stink of RMT. What you need is some sort of in game political prowess an the ability to create/motivate a Group climate where others will follow your banner.I for one am a Goon Hater, and only for the reason that its primary Leadership has become like BoB. I am also for the most part a nullsec bloc hater because of the RL like policies an politics of keeping subordinates as literal slaves.

I have followed your blog to simply reason out exactly why you left EvE, and i can only now surmise, you want to be a player that is #1 able to affect things and rule/control from behind the scenes with no one able to effectively compete with your power an in game prowess.I am sorry I can think of no game like that, especially EvE, you need allies, friends, soldiers, artisans, and farmers following a common ideal/banner....that you have created, in essence you must speak to their in game spirituality to do what you seem to want to do.You can play solo, or you can become the Leader your saying you want to be. You just can not be that Leader without sacrifice. Without that type of sacrifice the most you can do is find an organization with a cause you believe in and support it with your ability to "game" the economical system.

Otherwise I feel you will never find the game to satisfy you in the type of games such as EvE, Archage, etc that you are looking for.I personally think you could be great if you came back to EvE with newfound vigor if you could get past this hump.

If you are not afraid to learn some basic programming, you can try Screeps (https://screeps.com/) :- Several hundred real players- Good community (who mostly like to PvP)- AFAIK, no rigging as even high currency won't give you a big advantage- Open world shaped by players (you capture rooms in order to exploit them)

I think you will find it challenging and like it if you don't get repelled by the programming aspect of the game.

A game cannot be fulfilling if its mechanics and World are all irrelevant and all that matters is your ability to guess something out-of-game or get insider info from it. Yes, I believe Starcraft match should be about who clicks faster and have better build order and not about who guesses Blizzard Stock prices.

That is why I like Ark Survival Evolved. the world and player number per world could be bigger. but you will have impact on others!

Yes, if you play the real life money game, you should do just as you suggested. This is exactly why we have games at the first place: escapism from the real life money game.

no you don't. a small percentage have careers the rest have jobs. the majority is average, no you are most likely not exceptional. So if you don't want to spend 10-15 years in the military followed with some highly paid contractor shit on foreign ground. you will not get "easy money without ridiculous ties" ever (that bubble seems to be bursting tho).The high risk high gain illegal activity market is owned and once you penetrated their circles and turfs you will be in their system or dead without escape.Also you did miss illegal organ transfer and other things. Same thing, you'll be dead or have to pay up to the big guys running the shit for years.

Yes off course you can try to grind away hours upon hours in an IT, insurance or banking job. but without the credentials and bought support you'll be nothing. If you think you try day trading and ignore the warning that you are not exceptional, feel free to try, I gave up finding a broker that doesn't screw or rip me off, besides the state enforce fiscal caps and other bullshit regulations that requires regular legal council to keep everything clean I don't have the time nor the funds for it.

So, no, if you are not somewhat ruthless and don't shy away from nearly to fully kill people off directly or by proxy (military or shady hedge-fund manager like paul stinger). you will be just average slave joe in some shitty job until your dead. deal with it, the best we can hope for is to try to stay out of debt.

@GevlonSo all single player games are not worth playing then?Neither are massive coop hits like Pandemic.Neither are puzzles like Sudoku. Neither is Tetris (unless you go for high score).Neither are Legos.

That's a rather broad brush to paint games with, don't you think?

Performance in itself means nothing. You can be very efficient at painting the garden roses red then white then red etc to infinity. You can also be in the business of maximising your speed when you are actually moving towards a bottomless pit and should really be stopping right now or you fall into it.

Caring for performance on its own is stupid. It's like saying that the only goal of a car driver should be speed or optimisation of fuel consumption. Neither of these matter without a goal in sight. Heck, in some cases the important bit is how much you cram into the drive before it's morning and it is time to drive home.

You should care about performance only if you have some reason to do so. Caring about performance because you want to outcompete everyone is a good reason, but far from the only worthwhile one. For me, most of the times, i just want to see how far i can take a part of a system and to then see what this will do to the system as a whole. Whether the actual result of this is achieving nothing, getting me in #1 spot or collapsing the system entirely doesn't much matter to me. What matters is what i end up learning about the system in question and how i can apply it in game development, teaching and general life.

Physicists try to reach top particle speeds in Hadron Collider not because there is a race going on, but because they are just interested in what happens at these top speeds.Whether Hadron Collider is the most efficient use of scientific money is kind of beside the point - at least for scientists themselves. The notion that Hadron Collider can one day kill us all is also besides the point. Explorers gotta explore.

And, in an odd twist of events, when explorers stop exploring, there soon becomes very little for achievers to achieve, killers to kill and escapers to escape to.

P.S: this is not a statement of priority of exploration over others. If killers don't kill or achievers don't achieve, the gaming ecosystem collapses in its own way. We just had an example in No Man's Sky. The point is - it is a SYSTEM, which can't survive if all you care about is just one side.You seem to constantly have this bias where you state the priority of killer mindset over others and that's just not the way things work.

Sure, you may have been a small thorn in the Imperium's side.But if you really want to look at the reality of it.

You simply showed some one else where the key was.Lenny, not you, found a way to actually motivate people to invade Imperium space.He simply took his way of earning ISK, and 'part' of your methodology and expanded it.

In retrospect I would actually have to say he was more grounded in EvE politics and meta-gaming than you were. Because he actually succeeded where you did not.And i must attribute that to your unwillingness to group with others in a public and visible way. In such type of games, you can not play solo.You did, Goons remained where they were up to the point you quit.Lenny however did not play solo, and he took what you started "after" you quit and made it a reality.Which saying he tried to steal your credits....he did not, you started the ball rolling but he took the torch you dropped and ran with it, the fact Goons left the north can attributed all to him because in essence he is the one whom actually put together the winning package and implementation for doing so, not you. You only shined light on the economical how of what was needed as resources.

About your permanent Albion page - maybe I'm just tired, but I think it needs work Some immediate points are:

- It needs a better explanation of how the currencies in Albion work. Not everybody has a background in Albion, or for that matter, WoW (where the concept of 'gold' originated (I know I don't)) - The picture needs explanation, in particular what the vertical of the graph means. I don't think it's USD or any other RL currency. - You talk about 'RMT', but you aren't proving it. 'RMT' is understood as players making RL money usable for things other than game items (like going to a movie), outside of what the game devs want it to be used for. Sure, technically, making a Gold profit in order to pay for game time is gaining RL value - but that is a very specific value which the game devs intended you to have, so it doesn't fall under the 'RMT' umbrella.

Oh, and I think what @Maxim was trying say with #1 is: You're living in a dream world, Ne... I mean: Gevlon.

There are few games I am looking for ... unfortunately they seems to be a bit far from release. To be honest I don't see any pre-release game which is up to the mark by miles.

1_ Naval Action _ www.navalaction.com I love the era and naval history so it is a must watch for me. Game mechanics are there, it is world, pvp, player economics etc. and they are working pretty well. Graphic is stunning - UI is still WIP.Downside is devs are a small independent team ... Pro is they are very good at what they are doing. No kickstarter campaign but they are on steam. I am afraid it will be a niche game.

2_ Ashes of Creation _ looks very promising and I like the team behind. https://www.ashesofcreation.com unfortunately it is pretty far from release. They are starting their kickstarter campaign 1st of May.

I too stopped playing Albion Online, basically due to the idiotic devs ... the sooner they pop their head out of their own asshole the better.

@Maxim: if you are interested in one specific sub-system, there are single player games for that. An MMO is a World that you want to shape and the best way is always money. "Who controls the spice controls the universe"

Sure, one can give up shaping the World and be irrelevant, but why would someone choose to be irrelevant even in a simulated World.

@Druur: no one can prove RMT without actually catching them during the act. My point is that this "feature" allow so bizarre income that can't be spent reasonably in-game. Also, blindly speculating likely causes losses, so this is a corruption-only feature, only those with insider info can profitably speculate.

Wow. Harsh comments today. Welp, gotta have thick skin if you're going to play in THIS pool.

Count me in on the side that thinks your needs are not really doable. I can appreciate being competitive? But that can't be everything. I'm quite competitive... and I play WoW. I understand that I'll never be a "Mythic Raider", not because I can't do that, but because I won't do that. The "reward" (Beating Mythic raids)for doing that exceeds the cost (Working with massively competitive people.) "Winning" for me means doing the best I can in the context of the "league" I choose to play in. And that often means having a tiny bit of compassion for people that just aren't that good at a game. In the grand scheme of things, my life will not be improved if the only difference is I beat the "Nighthold" dungeon on Mythic rather than Normal. But if I have to kick people to the curb to go the Mythic route, I feel I would have lost an eighth. I'm competitive, but not THAT competitive.

Competition is damaging WoW more than you can imagine, and in all the bad ways that a game based on competition does, but without the upside of "winning" the competition. Even when they add quality of life features, like the multi tag system, there is a competition to it... you don't get to tag with the opposite faction. So if there are Horde tagging everything, and you're Alliance, whelp, you have to wait for them to be done. It's frustrating and has no upside to anyone except people who think they're "beating" you by tagging something first.

The problem with a "World" in your context (Building something "beats" someone else, causing them to fall behind.) is that the ability to "change the world" benefits only a small minority in it, specifically the minority able to exact the change. So everyone is working towards changing the world in ways then benefit their group at the expense of all others. This is a force of entropy, not one of creation.

And even THAT is only if everyone was working towards building something. Some people are anarchists and just want to burn the world.

I would suggest "Ashes of Creation", it seems pretty interesting. However, they even haven´t started the Alpha Phase and the Pre-Alpha will begin mabybe around End 2017/Begin 2018. So it can take two years util it´s release. meh

Could you please explain what makes gold in albion any different from PLEX in EVE? They are essentially the same from what I can tell (although one plex can be split into 2500 pieces in albion) but you don't have a Don't play EVE page because of gold/plex speculation.

While technically true, it is nonetheless possible to gather circumstantial evidence - like just Nosygamer did for EVE. You didn't do that; instead you are just speculating.

"My point is that this "feature" allow so bizarre income that can't be spent reasonably in-game."

So? That sounds more like a game balancing issue to me. And some people just like to see their wallet increase. There are people in EVE who have more ISK than they can reasonably spend in a decade.

"Also, blindly speculating likely causes losses, so this is a corruption-only feature, only those with insider info can profitably speculate."

By that logic, you're an RMTer as well. You made Billions speculating on the EVE market, because that's what the market is. You may not see it this way anymore, but trading is speculating that the market goes your way - it's just a kind of more educated speculating.

You are presenting no shred of actual evidence that Albion's creators are complicit in a RMT ring, apart from "Waaah! They make more Gold than I am!"

@Anon: nothing. This is why I left EVE when they announced the New Jita citadels where the "right" people trade PLEX with low taxes. Previously the taxes somewhat limited speculation.

@Druur: a "game balancing issue" that causes a 10 pages threadnought and could be fixed by a few clicks but not fixed is a purposeful loophole for exploiting.

I've never speculated in EVE. I did arbitrage and transporting and multibox-mining missions. Speculation is when you buy something, hold it because you expect the price will go up and sell it when it does.

The only way to consequently make good guesses on the gold market is insider info about player spending schedules, premium expiration schedules and upcoming developer central bank interventions. So the whole gold speculation is pointless without complicit devs.

@GevlonI am not interested in just one specific subsystem.Mastering the loot-gathering in something like Diablo is boring.However, if you can them plug it into all the other systems of the vast world and see how progress in this one narrow field affects the rest, then it gets interesting.

For that, however, you require the world.

As for money shaping the world - yeah, they do, when done well. Other mechanics, however, do that to a significant extent as well. It can be argued to an extent that money is the only mechanic so far that we have at least some success transferring from hands of developers to hands of players. However, there are already plenty of games that feature weird kinds of economy and non-monetary core trading mechanics. F/ex trading card ecosystems, heavily influenced by the tactics players come up with.

Heck, the aforementioned Diablo series had an excellent trading scene in Diablo 2, which thrived despite rampant RMT and duping, but never quite got there in Diablo 3, despite the latter having a far superior economical realisation. All because the other mechanics were lacking.

What about going back to EVE now that the casinos are gone and the high sec Keepstar market seems very likely? Looking at https://trade.eve-mogul.com/leaderboards Rita Jita seems to be making a lot of ISK, and I heard is feeling lonely at the lack of competition.

Jesus, these "go back to EVE" people.EVE is still a completely corrupted system where success only depends on connection to the devs. Albion Online with it's gold speculation is a heaven of fairness compared to that crap. No way in hell I go anywhere near that.

"What about going back to EVE now that the casinos are gone and the high sec Keepstar market seems very likely?"

I meant very unlikely of course, since the structures are so cheap even one person using them to save on paying 0.1% broker's fees through them for 2-3 weeks is enough to offset the cost of the structure.

@Anon: no, and I cannot have. Just like I can't prove that the bank manager who left the safe open and the alarm offline was cooperating with the robbers. Maybe he was just a complete retard. But:- since there are industry standards how to do these things and they kept doing the opposite after clearly warned, I go with corrupt- I won't invest hundreds of hours of my life into a game managed by innocent retards

Beat them at what? Almost the entire time since their introduction there has been a public 0% broker's fee market. It costs less than 6b for an Azbel with market and fuel for a month, and they can only be killed every 3 weeks. If the only option was Pandemic Horde's market (0.1% tax), then you'd only need to buy 60b of items through buy orders using your own private market to break even versus paying their 0.1% broker's fee. Sales are still almost entirely done in the NPC stations.

The whole Jita volume of trade is around 4000T/year. 0.1% of that is 4T/year. Pandemic Horde is banking that, without a single minute of player worktime (unless someone sieges it, but then the hordlings will come for free).

Somehow I find fighting against an enemy with 4T/year advantage unbalanced gameplay. But I must be wrong and I await for your glorious adventure of beating up PL/PH with your friends.

Pandemic Horde isn't banking anywhere near that because the only significant volume citadel markets get is from ranged buy orders, sell orders are still almost exclusively listed in Jita 4-4, as that's where people want to buy and store stuff. There is also a lot of competition and I can't remember a time when there wasn't a public 0% broker's fee market available, and as I said it only costs ~7.5b per month to put up your own public market, assuming it gets killed every three weeks.

I don't see anything unbalanced about putting in the effort to build a huge corporation/alliance/coalition and then using your power to take over space, an absolutely massive number of man hours are required to build and maintain such an entity, or organise operations to enforce your will. If it was that easy then everyone would be able to do it, right?

You keep making these outlandish statements, when you don't really have an idea about how things actually work, your statements are based on faulty assumptions and not the facts or reality of the situation. You can log in without a subscription now, so why don't you take a look, or use CREST to find out what's really happening, rather than spouting half-truths and conspiracy theories?

@Anonymous: there is absolutely nothing unbalanced in capturing nullsec zones and exploiting it. There is everything wrong effectively capturing highsec zones and tax the trading going on by casual players who can't possibly fight back against a nullsec alliance.

Also, even if highsec citadels were balanced, they still unbanned Lenny and rebanned only when threatened by lawsuit. Do you really think that they aren't in league with the next "Lenny"?